We live in the postdigital condition: Digitality and digital technologies, algorithms and algorithmic logics have become the background and starting point of our everyday actions, distinctions such as digital/analog or online/offline are becoming increasingly blurred (Jandrić et al. 2018). Technologies permeate almost all areas of life and thus also school and teaching. The concept of 'postdigitality' reminds us that it is not only the digital that needs to be considered when thinking about technology, especially in educational contexts (Fawns 2019). Interwoven social, economic, cultural, political, ethical, or ecological conditions, logics, and forms of organization are also inscribed in the technologies we use, and these conditions constitute our practices of use. Moreover, the concept of 'postdigitality' also reminds us that the conditions we live in today, are always noisy, messy and chaotic and we always have to deal with not knowing and understanding a lot (Macgilchrist 2021). 

FabLabs/Making Spaces are open spaces, where making with a variety of analog and digital materials and technologies is central. Such labs can also function as (extracurricular) spaces of education (Schelhowe 2013). In my dissertation project, I co-design and observe educational activities for and with schools, a FabLab and a diverse student body. Participatory methods, involving close cooperation between research and practice, and an ethnographic sensibility is central to this. Drawing on research on postdigital education and educational making, the focus is on the following question: What happens in FabLabs as postdigital educational spaces - from the perspective of the different actors involved?

This study conceptualizes FabLabs as 'sociotechnical configurations' and 'postdigital educational contexts': They are understood as constituted by interwoven, social, political, cultural, economic, pedagogical, technical and algorithmic logics and forms of organization, material artifacts, architectures and individual competencies (Jasanoff 2016; Suchman 2007). From this perspective, educational processes are not shaped by individual or autonomous persons, but by sociotechnical configurations. When educational processes in labs are viewed through the 'post-digital lens', it opens the view to the interconnectedness of analog and digital action and social, technical, cultural, political, and ethical (messy!) structures and logics that also structure a lab.

In the first stage of research and analysis, 'failure' has emerged as a central phenomenon. 'Failure' is raised in the literature as central to (educational) making, but is mostly mentioned in terms of the successful design of a product or artifact, or in terms of a positive culture of mistakes and productivity, without being discussed or analyzed in more detail (Martin 2015): Productive failure in making appears as a quasi-natural path to success and learning, whereby I’d like to question this critically. If failure is discussed, then the focus is on failure as an individual and subjective process; overall, the subjective perspectives and individual experiences of the actors are in the foreground (Cross 2017), although isolated studies could also be identified that indicate that failure is much more complex (Maltese et al. 2018). But even in these studies, however, individual actors and actions are the primary focus (Simpson et al. 2018).

Following on from this, beyond the individual and drawing on the sociotechnical conceptualisation noted above, this dissertation will focus on 'failure' not only as an individual, but as a complex, sociotechnical phenomenon in a post-digital educational context: In response to the research question posed above one thing that happens in FabLabs is the unfolding of failure as a socio-technical phenomenon. The aim of the contribution is therefore, first, to reflect on my research process and methodological aspects such as opportunities and challenges of participatory collaboration with educational practice. Second, to present initial results on 'failure' in postdigital educational contexts, using the example of FabLab/Making.

The iterative and participatory research process was structured as follows: Within the larger framework of a social living lab approach (Dezuanni et al. 2018), three design cycles of design, implementation, reflection and analysis were realized. Inspired, among others, by Lambert & Hessler’s (2018) approach to digital storytelling, educational activities on the topic of 'postdigital storytelling' were designed in a participatory way (Sanders 2013, Costanza-Chock 2020) and implemented and researched with diverse schools/school classes (students and teachers) in a FabLab in a major German city. The educational activities were implemented from September to December 2021, from June-July 2022 and in January-February 2023. A special feature of the project is the close collaboration between educational research and two educational practice partners: FabLab and Schools. In the research process, participatory and qualitative-observational procedures and methods - e.g. co-design, co-reflections, participant observations, interviews - were integrated with ‘ethnographic sensibility’ (McGraham 2014) to generate findings. Thus, during the implementation of educational activities, a variety of data were collected - e.g., fieldnotes, voice recordings and transcriptions, photographs, designed artifacts and materials - and then analyzed in a coding process (Charmaz 2012). The reflection and analysis phases were followed by the re-design of the activities, which took place in close collaboration between the researchers and educational practitioners (from the FabLab). Apart from the field observations, participatory co-reflection sessions emerged as a central method that opened up important insights and was also key to integrating the diverse perspectives of the actors involved in the research and design processes (researchers, educational practitioners, teachers, students). The third and final design cycle (implementation of an educational activity in the FabLab, data collection) is currently running (January-February 2023), so that I can then start the final phase of data analysis for my PhD.

The final phase of data analysis in my PhD project will start in February 2023, so by ECER/ERC 2023 I expect to have more findings to present beyond discussing the design and methodological setup (esp. the challenges of participatory design and research) of my PhD project. Currently, the results of my analyses point in the following direction: With regard to my research question (What happens in FabLabs as postdigital educational sites - from the perspective of the different actors involved?), 'failure' emerged as a central, complex and socio-technical phenomenon in the process of the three design cycles and the implementation of the educational activities with school classes. Firstly, my research-practice partners spoke a lot about ‘failure’ or ‘having failed’, so I will focus this speaking in my further analysis. Secondly, ‘failure', which also appears as 'stumbling', seems to be linked to various other phenomena, processes and emotions: e.g. machines/technologies, tools and programs, social and contextual conditions, previous experiences, knowledge, communication and collaboration as well as support processes, but also emotions like perplexity, frustrations, joy and amazement. And also changes of (pedagogical) roles seem to be linked to 'failure' in the context of FabLab and Making. The paper will analyze these linkages. Overall, the paper will draw on theories of failure from across the social and educational sciences to explore the argument, that ‘failure’ is constitutive not only for FabLab/Making, but for postdigital educational contexts and life in a postdigital society as a whole.

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